Facebook Ad Targeting for Hotels

Are you considering running Facebook ads for your hotel? Have you tried Facebook ads but have had little success?

Facebook can do a lot to help you find your ideal audience online for hotel marketing. The targeting capabilities on Facebook are arguably far more advanced than any other social media platform. Facebook allows brands to get in front of their perfect audience on a regular basis.

Why targeting? Because it’s more effective. A study by the Network Advertising Initiative found that behaviorally-targeted advertising is more than twice as effective at converting users who click on the ads into buyers (6.8% conversion vs. 2.8% for run-of-network ads), and that behavioral advertising accounted for approximately 18% of advertising revenue. If you can reach prospective guests with ads that match their interests, you’re already on your way to building a relationship with that guest by delivering personally relevant email marketing messages and experiences.

Here are some ways you can target specific audiences with Facebook advertising.

Know your guests’ interests

On Facebook, you can target people who have expressed an interest in or like pages related to another page or topic. This is interest-based targeting, although it is commonly confused with “likes” targeting.

There are thousands of interests to target, and they’re located in the Interests section of your ad set settings.

Type literally anything into the search box and Facebook will suggest matching or related interests.

Interest targeting usually means that you’re targeting large audiences. So before you set up interest targeting, evaluate the size of your target group. Then consider combining an interest with at least one other targeting method.

Seek out prospective guests looking to book a trip

Our online behavior tells platforms a lot about our buying intentions. By combining data from different sources, Facebook is able to tell who is in the process of buying a given product.

Therefore, you can target people who are looking to buy something specific; for example, people who are business travelers, or who are planning to book a casino vacation.

You’ll see multiple categories in a scenario like this because Facebook allows you to be that specific. Experiment with this targeting option to determine which methods are most profitable.

Combine age and gender with where people live

Instead of simply targeting geographic areas, add age groups and gender to the mix. For example, target men ages 25-35 who live in New York City.

This is based on the first information people share when they create a Facebook profile: age, gender, and city they live in. This is a great way to use Facebook to target people that live in your hotel’s geographical area, who are more likely to book a stay at the last minute.

This method can be used right after setting up an ad set.

Target virtually any state, region and city in the world (with a few exceptions). Another option is to exclude part of a region to optimize your ads even further.

A few selected countries, such as the United States, also support zip code targeting.

Experiment with other demographics

When setting up your ad, you also have the option to target by demographics such as relationship status, level of education, generation, and more. For example, if you’re a luxury hotel with a high ADR, you could target people by their income or net worth, to reach people who are more likely to be able to afford to stay at your hotel. If you’re a hotel that caters to families, you can target parents or moms. Facebook also allows you to narrow these choices to get even more specific. For example, it lets you narrow the parents based on the age of their kids.

Reach out to those with an upcoming anniversary

This category targets people with an anniversary within 30 days. Since there is a deadline to a couple’s milestone, it’s an excellent opportunity to reach prospective guests who are likely to book a trip.

Find upcoming anniversaries in the Life Events subcategory of Demographics.

In conclusion

While many hotel marketers and business owners believe Facebook ad targeting options are too limited or too general, that’s not the case. There are a ton of targeting options and combinations out there.

Facebook is a goldmine of data and is definitely a good choice for the vast majority of businesses. This is just a selection of target audiences, among hundreds of options, available to anyone using the Facebook Ads interface.

Facebook ads are effective. Take the time to research different target methods to find the ones that best fit with your hotel’s audience, so you can create successful Facebook ad campaigns.

What do you think? Which combinations have you tried? What targeting works best for your business? Please share your thoughts and recommendations in the comments.

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